Empathy with Fictional Stories: Reconsideration of the Fantasy Scale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index

Abstract

The present research compared empathy for real people with empathy for fictional characters. 95 university students (53 men, 42 women) ages 18–22 years ( M = 19.5, SD = 1.9) completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Fictional IRI. The IRI is a widely used measure of human empathy, and the Fictional IRI contains items from the original IRI that have been modified to investigate empathy for fictional characters. Empathy for characters in fictional stories was found to correlate statistically significantly with empathy for real people on all but a few factors. The results of the present study indicate that empathy for real people and empathy for fictional characters are similar, suggesting that the Fantasy subscale of the IRI, which is limited to fictional stories, should be reconsidered.